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Thankful Tuesday: Kid-Sized

Last week Jesse had a rough outing on the baseball field. Actually, things went pretty well for most of the game until he was called in to pitch in the final innings. (In our league, a player can only pitch 4 innings.) It didn’t go as he had hoped. The other team hit whatever he pitched. He blew the lead and we ended up losing the game. Earlier that week he had a similarly disappointing outing when he, in his words, “got mercy-ruled on.” That means the other team scored enough runs that the umps call the inning before the usual 3 outs.

But being a kid can be great, because he didn’t respond at all the way I would be tempted to respond. Call it quits. Resign from pitching. Cry for a day or two. Nope, none of that.

Instead, he went to YouTube. He looked up pitching tutorials and he found one he liked, and he practiced the motion step by step by step until he could speed it up to real time. Dan helped him and they spent a couple hours out in the heat seeing if the YouTube guy knew what he was talking about.

Apparently he did.

Monday night Jesse was the starting pitcher. Instead of worrying about his recent failures, he couldn’t wait to show the guys what he had going on now.

And he pitched a heck of a game. A no-hitter through his allowed 4 innings. Some pretty nice hitting, too.

I’m thankful for a son who doesn’t give up but chooses to take responsibility and act. I’m thankful for the sweet bravado of being nearly 11. I’m thankful for YouTube and that college pitcher who needed a how-to topic for his speech class.

I’m thankful and hopeful because as I understand it some of that pluck could also rub off on me, and I could use some “faith like a child.” How about you?